South Bank Institute of Technology

South Brisbane, Brisbane, Queensland

The significant challenge of the Southbank Institute of Technology project was to ‘reinvent’ a former TAFE College, comprising a typically discordant and introspective series of buildings, into a new model of tertiary campus thriving upon multidisciplinary collaboration. The process entailed the complex study of which buildings to retain for their ability to be transformed into interactive facilities, which to remove for new insertions, and how the overall composition could evolve into a dynamic urban environment. The study generated the scribing of a continuous arc through the campus length, acting as the primary movement spine and organising element. Its geometry provides for new shared use facilities – library, main theatres and student centre – to be centralised about a campus heart that connects across Ernest Street, thus unifying the campus. An array of secondary cross-links and arcades contribute further to the creation of a transformed, interactive campus that also now forms a publicly accessible urban precinct of the city.